Researching the Future
I’d like to tell you about a coffee cup conversation I had between a bunch of researchers while I was at Intel Labs Europe. It lasted about 30 minutes, but at the end of it we had created a vision of the future, and a vision of what the car industry could look like.
A lot of research involves trying to peer into the future. It’s not about fortune telling; it’s about looking at current trends and projecting them forward. Once you project the trends forward you create a vision of the future. This vision then leads to a collection of research questions. It all sounds a bit convoluted but this discussion provides quite an elegant and short example.
Intel was my first introduction to the world of industrial research. The team I worked with didn’t focus on automobile research, that team was based in another country. So, this conversation starts with the basics about what we knew and it evolved from there.
There were about four of us who shared the same afternoon coffee break in the staff canteen. As we sat enjoying the coffee, the conversation turned to the car industry.
Trend 1: The premium brand car sharing scheme
I had recently worked on a proposal for an international car manufacturer. They had been analysing current population and car use trends. They had noted the increased urbanisation that is happening. Simply put, more people than ever before are living in cities. Additionally, large cities tend to have good public transport which leads, naturally, to less car ownership. The car company had asked the question “How do we get people who don’t own a car to drive ours?”. They had started work on a manufacturer branded car sharing scheme. One which would allow you as a customer to select the best vehicle type when you needed it, from estate to small hatch back. The same manufacturer was considering competition from other car sharing schemes and, as a premium brand, was trying to work out how to ensure that their cars and their sharing scheme would be selected over any another. They focused on the “in car” experience - having your music library follow you, your seat position preferences pre-set, sat nav settings etc.
Trend 2: The back-seat experience
We had heard stories that some luxury car manufacturers had recently discovered that the majority of their customers don’t actually have a driving license. Instead these new buyers were being chauffeur driven. The car manufacturer had spent millions developing an amazing cockpit / driving experience but the majority of owners simply never experienced it. Instead this manufacturer was investigating what could be done to improve the quality of the experience in the rear of the car. What about better entertainment? Or a working environment?
Trend 3: The self-driving car
We started to discuss the news we had recently heard about Google’s self-driving cars. At the time Google’s programme had only been public knowledge for about 6 months, even so, Google announced that they had already driven themselves around thousands of miles on Californian roads. What impact would this have in the future?
Trend 4: The electric car
Hybrids and then small electric cars had already appeared on the market. The distance the cars could travel was small but, looking at Tesla, we saw that the range could be and would be dramatically increased. What impact would this have?
Back to the conversation
We did exactly what you’d imagine we would; we combined each of these trends. This resulted in:
An electric, self-driving car which comes to collect you in the morning for your commute to work. You pay a monthly fee for the transport rather than owning it out right. You have a choice of manufacturers to choose from.
The next question was, what would make you choose one car manufacturer over another? -Well, it’s a self-driving car, so we are no longer driving it. So what do we do during the commute in the morning? Well in our conversation we came up with the following:
- Check email
- Work
- Sleep
- Eat
What features help make these experiences better?
- Well for email and working, that’s Wi-Fi and good internet connectivity.
- For sleeping, that’s good leg room, and a nice soft seat, maybe one that reclines.
- For eating? Well maybe I could bring my own breakfast, or perhaps breakfast is included in the car hire. As this is a self-driving car that we don’t own, but turns up at the door, perhaps it comes with a fresh breakfast? Maybe I like car brand “A” because they have Starbucks coffee and I love Starbucks?
Existing Industry Relations
The next question we asked was “Are there any other industries in which seat type, leg space and food are important factors which influence consumer choice?”. Well yes there are ... it’s the airline industry. So, is the future of the car industry something that looks like the airline industry?
In Germany, Lufthansa allows you to check in for your flight at the local train station. You drop your bag off and your boarding pass gets you on both the train and the plane. You don’t see your bags again until the destination. This led us to imagine the following:
What if when going on holiday or business trip, your self-driving Lufthansa electric car arrives. You put your bag in the boot and get in the back of the car. The nice comfortable car allows you to recline the seat and a fresh cup of Starbucks coffee is provided to you in a travel cup. You relax enjoying the coffee and, since there is no need to check in for your flight, the car drops you off at security. You progress through security and onto the flight. When you land on the other side you walk out of the airport and an electric car is waiting for you; you step in. There again are your favourite snacks. Arriving at your hotel/ destination you go to the boot of the second electric car and collect your bag.
Back to today
Research involves a lot of trying to understand the trends, looking at how they could be combined together and the experiences they can provide. Once this vision of the future is sketched out it is possible to identify the challenges, both technically and within a business context, which may need to be overcome or addressed for that vision to be a reality.
So, what changes might we see in the car industry?
We can imagine that the car industry might move in a similar direction to the airline industry. Uber, as one example, is providing a “car as a service” experience . This is a challenge to manufacturers as it removes them and their brands away from the consumer’s consciousness. After all, we talk about flying with Delta, or British Airways, but we very rarely say we had an Embraer, Airbus or Boeing aircraft. If this happens consumers will pay for a premium experience, but they will pay that to whoever provides the “car as a service” experience, not to the car manufacturers. The manufacturers will become commodity car providers and this would result in a loss of revenue as they will not be able to charge their premium rates. We’ve seen this happen before in the Aircraft industry and it eventually this will lead to consolidation of manufactures.
Of course, if the manufacturers realise the challenge and start to buy-in or launch their own “car as a service” experiences then this vision might be different. Toyota has launched a service called Yuko which offers a Toyota car experience. If this trend continues we could see car manufacturers produce their own services and compete as transport service providers. Here the quality of experience will be directly linked to the quality of the cars and the services the car provides.
Inter Service Links
Within the airline industry networks of air travel providers exist, such as, Star Alliance and One World. These networks allow airlines to sell tickets across routes that they themselves don’t own. Using the scenario where the self-driving car delivers your bag to your destination/ hotel, then these links will become important, if not essential. It might be the case that the networks and car services unite together in some form, but this could be a long way in the future.
Technology Trends
To support this new vision of the future there will be many areas for technology research, for instance:
- Bag tracking software and ID tags
- In car coffee brewing
- Car redesign and new reclining car seats
- High speed radio connectivity for high speed cars
- Inter-car communication and coordination
- New sensors and tracking to enable smoother car journeys
- Personal clouds of music and digital assets and in-network CDNs delivering content and sharing content between cars
and more...
All this and we’ve not even considered what a motorway service station of the future might look like...
----
Image credits: Many thanks to everyone who shares their work on flikcr, The following images where used under creative commons:
